None of Google services - Android, Chrome OS, Google Drive support Open Document Formats. I am left with puzzling questions why is Google not supporting ODF and locking users into an incompatible and vendor-locked OOXML format? Will Google endorse open standards and Open Document Formats or its users will be forced to use Microsoft's OOXML? I

Is anyone else getting the constant switching back and forth between interface designs in Google? I get a "Welcome to the new google" and there is a matrix in the upper right hand of the screen. Which I hate not being able to orginize or adjust. Then the next time I log in it will be back to the standard interface we have come to know and resent.

I need to enable IMAP so I can ignore the "extra special folders" thing with "someone might know you" and "I wish to sell you something". I am glad I run a "Citadel" instance on the side, so I can avoid all that crap. Hope IG does not read this and think about monetizing on that....

Oct 17 2013 7:59pm from Sig I have been getting the new thing. I don't care for it very much. I wish to have the old arrangement, and the ability to remove applets that I don't use.

It keeps switching back and forth for me and I get the "Welcome to the new" bubble each time. The old method wasn't the best but it is much better than that matrix icon. The matrix icon would improve if you could move, delete or add the apps you wanted.

This 23-year-old’s open-source project, a server running on Raspberry Pi, gives the middle finger to GoogleFor most of us, Google shutting down Reader was annoying. For Jacob Cook, it was a call to arms.He’s now building an operating system that anyone can use to replace all of the services that Google provides — or any other cloud company, for that matter. Email, chat, file sharing, web hosting: With Cook’s arkOS, you’ll be able to run all of those essential services on a secure, private server in your own home that’s about the size of a credit card.http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/10/arkos-secure-google-alternative/

So you probably might get a Google Play layer in chrome, but it will not be called android anymore.

This is kind of a follow up on the article quoted above, it takes a detailed view on all the apps that were open source once and are now a closed source google variant, downloadable from the play store and/or bundled in gapps package. And none of these apps is called "android" anymore, following the logic of the above article. Give it two years and android will be called gOS instead. ;)

The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android—Google's Android—and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork.

If you use any Google APIs and try to run your app on a Kindle, or any other non-Google version of AOSP: surprise! Your app is broken. Google's Android is a very high percentage of the Android market, and developers only really care about making their app easily, making it work well, and reaching a wide audience. Google APIs accomplish all that, with the side effect that your app is now dependent on the device having a Google Apps license.

I was playing a "full album rip" on YouTube, and stopped it when I got to
my destination. Then I wanted to keep listening to it on a computer, so I
fired up YouTube, located the same selection, and ... it began playing at
the exact moment I paused it on my mobile.

Very cool that it now remembers where you left off and can continue from
there, even on a different device.